Never Look Back
by Aussiegirl41
Summary: Ethel is eager to escape her past by first gaining a position in a grand house, and then setting out to find a husband.


**I wrote this during season 2 for the lovebelowstairs challenge to write a plausible back story for one of the characters. **

Ethel opened the back door, hung up her coat and slowly looked around the gloomy, dark kitchen.

"You're late," her Aunt Edna spat out as a greeting, not bothering to glance up from where she was hunched over, threading a needle.

"The family wanted me to stay longer. It was Mrs Sinclair's birthday. We even had cake."

Edna sniffed and pointed a knobbed finger at the ceiling.

"Your mother's had no cake."

"I brought some," she said pleasantly, heaving her battered case up onto the table.

"You can't go giving cake to your mother in her condition," Edna hissed.

"I'm certain one piece of cake will do no harm."

Edna grunted.

"Perhaps you would like the cake instead, Aunt," Ethel suggested hollowly, slowly retrieving the cake tin from her bag and placing it on the table by her aunt.

"Mind the sewing!" Edna snapped. "Make yourself useful, girl, and stir the potato stew."

Nodding obediently, Ethel lifted the lid on the pot simmering on the stove. It smelt like Mr Sinclair's boots.

She screwed her nose and scraped off the dregs sticking to the pot's base.

"Throw in another handful of salt while you're there," Edna ordered.

She picked up the salt and hesitated. _An entire handful? _"Is there any meat in it?"

"It's _potato _stew, girl. Where would the likes of us get meat twice in one week? You might act all high and mighty, but you're still just a maid and you don't exactly bring us home a king's ransom."

She could feel her aunt's disapproving glare without even turning away from the pot.

"Likely you're skimming the top off your earnings to buy yourself fancy stockings and magazines," the old woman was now saying.

"I send home everything!" she cried, tears of frustration welling in her eyes as she kept stirring the stew mechanically.

"Have you been looking for a different house, like I told you? A big house offers opportunity. You need a man to-"

Ethel slammed the spoon down with a clatter and swung around to her aunt.

"I like the Sinclairs. They're good people."

"They're middle class as best," her aunt muttered. "And they won't need a butler or a footman."

Grasping her hands together in frustration, she took a jerky step towards the stairs. "I'll just go and see mother."

"She's having a bad day."

"I'll just go and see mother," she repeated firmly, ignoring her aunt's grumbling.

However, all her impertinence disappeared when she entered her mother's bedroom.

She clasped a hand across her mouth and nose; the stench of vomit, blood and other human excrement uncomfortably stinging her senses.

She ran to the window and prised it open, gasping for fresh air.

Finally, once she'd composed herself and was sure she wasn't going to bring the cake she'd had back up, she left the window and moved to her mother's bedside.

There was little evidence the woman in the bed was actually her mother. She was as small as a child, her features skeletal and ghostly.

"Ma?" she murmured.

Agnes Parks's eyes fluttered open.

"Ma, it's me, Ethel."

"Ethel?" Her mother's eyes darted around the room. "Where's Edna?"

"She's downstairs, Ma. I've come to visit."

"From where?"

"I work for the Sinclairs, remember?"

Her mother pointed one bony finger towards her uniform. "You're a maid?"

"Yes," she said warmly. Maybe she would remember today.

"The head maid?"

Ethel nodded enthusiastically. "Yes."

Agnes Parks frowned. "I've never heard of Lord and Lady Sinclair. What's their house called?"

She bit down on her lip. "Brinsmead Cottage."

"A cottage? It's not a stately home?"

The door opened and Edna entered, holding a tray with a pot of tea and the cake, cut into several small pieces. She placed it on the side table before she efficiently set to work, rolling her mother to one side to change her clothing and clean her.

Ethel watched, feeling useless, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Ethel brought us some cake from the fancy place where she's a maid," Edna told her sister.

"Fancy? A cottage?"

"You misunderstood, Ma. That was my previous position," Ethel whispered, catching Edna's eye over her mother's head. Her aunt nodded approvingly. "I'm now situated in a house so large, it's almost a castle…"


End file.
